So I decided that we should extend blueprints to work with trains as well.

Can we add cars/tanks/modded vehicles to blueprints also?

Both of the trains in the blueprint will have the "Iron Mine X" -> " Smelting" schedule setup. Once I build the blueprint, I just rename the "Iron Mine X" to whatever I want ("Iron Mine 12" for example), and the train schedules are updated as well, so I'm almost ready to go.

Does this mean you're using the current behaviour of "Iron Mine X is a unique station name, so when I rename it all the train schedules are updated" or does it mean that the names of stops in train schedules are now editable? Because I feel like being able to click on any existing train, copy its schedule, paste it onto another one and then rename the stops would be another big QoL improvement.

While we're talking about train schedule QoL improvements, can we add the ability to copy paste individual sections of train schedules? In conjunction with the above ability to rename items in the schedule, this would make it a lot nicer to build multiple trains with similar, but complicated scheduling.

While we're talking about train schedule QoL improvements, can we add the ability to copy paste individual sections of train schedules? In conjunction with the above ability to rename items in the schedule, this would make it a lot nicer to build multiple trains with similar, but complicated scheduling.

Even in game right now, if you have a station name "Mine 1" and several trains with schedules to it; if you change the name to "Iron Mine 1," then all trains schedules will update. So, with the blueprint here in FFF, if you have a station labeled "Mine X" and the trains in the blueprint are also set to stop at "Mine X," when you change the name to "Copper Mine 1" they will update to match. This means, that every time you place the blueprint, it gets built, and you change the name; it will not affect past and future placements of this blueprint.

While we are at the subject of adding trains to blueprints, can we please also have the option to add tanks and cars to blueprints? This would be extremely useful for some lategame, UPS optimised setups, aswell as some train loader?unloader designs.

While we're talking about train schedule QoL improvements, can we add the ability to copy paste individual sections of train schedules? In conjunction with the above ability to rename items in the schedule, this would make it a lot nicer to build multiple trains with similar, but complicated scheduling.

Even in game right now, if you have a station name "Mine 1" and several trains with schedules to it; if you change the name to "Iron Mine 1," then all trains schedules will update. So, with the blueprint here in FFF, if you have a station labeled "Mine X" and the trains in the blueprint are also set to stop at "Mine X," when you change the name to "Copper Mine 1" they will update to match. This means, that every time you place the blueprint, it gets built, and you change the name; it will not affect past and future placements of this blueprint.

This also means then that you can't put down 5 copies of the blueprint and then change the one station, you're required to do the process of "put down blueprint, change station name, put down blueprint, change station name, etc..." if you want each copy of the blueprint to end up with a different schedule. With the blueprint this is still much easier than it was previously, but being able to edit the names in the schedule directly without changing the conditions in the schedule would still be a big improvement.

While we're talking about train schedule QoL improvements, can we add the ability to copy paste individual sections of train schedules? In conjunction with the above ability to rename items in the schedule, this would make it a lot nicer to build multiple trains with similar, but complicated scheduling.

Even in game right now, if you have a station name "Mine 1" and several trains with schedules to it; if you change the name to "Iron Mine 1," then all trains schedules will update. So, with the blueprint here in FFF, if you have a station labeled "Mine X" and the trains in the blueprint are also set to stop at "Mine X," when you change the name to "Copper Mine 1" they will update to match. This means, that every time you place the blueprint, it gets built, and you change the name; it will not affect past and future placements of this blueprint.

This also means then that you can't put down 5 copies of the blueprint and then change the one station, you're required to do the process of "put down blueprint, change station name, put down blueprint, change station name, etc..." if you want each copy of the blueprint to end up with a different schedule. With the blueprint this is still much easier than it was previously, but being able to edit the names in the schedule directly without changing the conditions in the schedule would still be a big improvement.

Right. You just worded it better than I did.

This just makes life a lot easier in my style of play where I have mines of various names and a central smelting location where all trains drop off resources. Now I will not have to repeatedly write the same schedule over and over.

the only legit way for train building a a factory that you need to build - and only in this factory you can build trains.
and trains can no longer be deconstructed by hand or robots if they are on a rail - you need to take them to the factory again and then you can deconstruct them.
make the hole trainsystem more realistic!

Will there be a hook for mods to make it possible to also blueprint the content of the vehicle grid of a train?
One usecase would be a newly built LTN-Depot with some trains and putting power, overdrive-engines, shields and such into every train by hand becomes a real chore...

Okay, now that we've gotten how cool this is out of the way, time to beg for more features: first, will this work with other vehicles, second, we need recursive blueprints even more now, and third, can we use this to upgrade fuel types.

There are 10 types of people: those who get this joke and those who don't.

Also, I foresee the upgrade planner messing with braided underground belts. I'm not sure what the best solution is there. You could make it just ignore braided belts, but then they form a bottleneck in an otherwise faster design. If you have undergrounds being upgraded anywhere in the planner you could make yellow/red and yellow/blue braids become red/blue. But this becomes trickier when you factor in modded belts that may not follow the exact vanilla tiers.

Another possibility might be introducing an extra underground belt entity at each tier, to allow braiding belts of the same speed. But then the upgrade planner would need to recognize that and change some of the belts but not others, which may be tricky to calculate (and also necessitates an extra underground belt assembler per belt tier, which will mess up everyone's existing designs. Not like that's necessarily the worst thing in the world, of course.)

All that seems to add extra inconvenience onto what is ultimately a convenience feature, though, so maybe just blindly upgrading all belts and forcing players to redo braided designs is for the best.

Upgrade planner doesn't mess up braided belts, people mess up braided belts.
-or-
Upgrade planner is a good servant but a bad master.

It's the end of an era when the upgrade planner mod won't be downloadable from the portal

I was talking about Upgrade Planner over on the Factorio discord and Bilka mentioned that since the 0.17 version is different than what we currently have, there is a chance it will still be updated. The instant replace feature will be gone from the "official" version, but hopefully the mod will still be updated. So... don't count it out just yet!